G-Slate

The folks from LG have announced some news lately that doesn't come as much surprise to me. Remember the LG G-Slate tablet? Yea I don't either. They released it way last year as one of the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets, and it still sits on Android 3.1 Honeycomb to this day. With almost no support whatsoever they've been focused heavily on their smartphones, and apparently that will be the focus moving forward.

We haven't heard much from LG and their G-Slate since it was launched back in April but the 8.9" 3D capable device is still chugging along. In case users and owners were wondering about future upgrades I'm happy to report that the LG G-Slate should start seeing the OTA update to Android 3.1 Honeycomb today, or early tomorrow. Basically I'd just start hitting "check for updates" right now if I owned one.

So we got wind of a brand new app on the block, one that may well replace our favorite dual-core benchmarking application Smartbench 2011 in a heartbeat. Of course, we'd never wish such a thing to happen, and given that we've recently had such awesome fun with that benchmarking system, we wish them only the best, but let's have a look at another option here. This is CF-Bench, a benchmarking tool that's got support for testing multiple cores on your Android device, allowing you to test both native and managed code - joyous day, let's see who gets the best!

Which one of these things is not like the other - which one of them does not belong? Any lay-person looking at the three tablets in this odd stack up might say the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on account of its white color and custom-etched backing, but look at that little weirdo. The LG G-Slate is one of the latest dual-core tablets to be released in the USA and it's ever-so-slightly smaller than the other two here in this stack-up. It's also got a 3D camera. That's pretty weird. And what about that Motorola XOOM? It's what, several months old. Shouldn't it be extinct by now? Hardly. Behold this week's ultimate battle to the death, Google I/O 2011 style.

We've just received official word from LG that both the T-Mobile G2x and the G-Slate BOTH have IPS displays. There's been a bit of debate about this as of late, whether the display on these devices were simply TFT or if they amped it up a few notches to the more expensive and more fantastic in both color and viewing angles In-Plane Switching (IPS.) What does this mean, you might ask? Why should I give one hoot? Because now you know you can watch Tron: Legacy with the BRIGHT lights!

It's said that good things come to those who wait. Well, sometimes it pays to jump in early. T-Mobile is offering a $100 discount on a two year contract when users purchase the LG G-Slate and data plan before April 27th. But there's a catch.

Wow, talk about a lot of exciting products all launching at the same time. Usually carriers do one thing at a time. Looks like T-Mobile isn't wasting any time trying to be the best even though they might become AT&T-Mobile. Today being April 20th, you can now purchase in-store the LG G-Slate, the LG G2x, and the Sidekick 4G. We have reviewed them all this week, so you'll want to see those for sure.

Well would you look at that, we've had the opportunity to have an even closer look at the wave-racing game Riptide GP, optimized for NVIDIA Tegra 2 devices, made to roll out nicely on the G-Slate! I say even close because we did get to peek at this game back at Pepcom during CTIA 2011, a convention in sunny Orlando Florida some weeks ago. See below as we run through what this still-slightly-early build of the game has to offer, all of it here on the utterly new T-Mobile G-Slate!

Welcome to the greatest pinball video game collection ever - ever, of all time. I apologize before we begin this "review" on account of my rare but very clear freaking out over how much I love the developers of this pinball series, Gameprom. The first game I ever saw made by Gameprom was SLAYER Pinball. Once I played that, I was hooked, purchasing every pinball game they made since. Unfortunately, none of those pinball games have been out on Android until now. You and I are in for a big treat, as they're going to release three games all at once, the suite called Pinball HD, and they're all coming out teamed up with NVIDIA's Tegra 2 processor - you know what that means? Time for some G-Slate action.

A seller on eBay is listing the LG G-Slate with a starting bid of $800, Buy it now at $1200. By contrast, T-Mobile lists the G-Slate as selling for $529.99 with a two year data plan and after $100 mail-in rebate. The listing says that the G-Slate is in stock and will ship at auction's end. That's pretty interesting considering that T-Mobile lists the Honeycomb tablet as "coming soon" and the launch date is still two weeks away.